Dean Pattrick Head of Nokia Entertainment showing off some of the Mix Radio features (And yes that is a Badass Guns&Roses T-shirt)

Now that MWC is over (unfortunately) I had a chance to organize all the Q&A sessions we had with all the awesome Nokia guys; we had four in total, one with Damien Dinning about the 808 and it’s camera which I posted seperately, here we have 3 more Q&As about the Luima design, Nokia Maps/Transport and Nokia Entertainment.

Once again I’ve listed the points in Bulletins for quick reading and because I can’t remember all the questions

Just want to mention that all the Nokia people were AMAZINGLY nice and really comfortable to be around; Dean Pattrick spent the first 15 minutes telling us ‘war stories’ that sounded alot like something else 😉 and Jason Gregory the man responsible for the N9 and the Lumia 800/900 spent about an hour in a bean bag chair having a causal chat with me.

Anyways off to it, hope you find this useful (Unfortunately I lost the notebook I had written these notes in so I’m going off of memory here)

“Since Nokia Are now the largest provider of Windows phone (largest share of the pie) our greatest focus will be on Increasing the size of the pie” (~~ focus on helping WP grow rather than competing for the current WP market share)

Mix Radio is a free, internet streaming music proposition with no subscription or accounts needed. Just out of the box and listen to great music.

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Lumia/WP

The 800 was not being planned or designed before Feb 11th (meaning that there was no previous indication of a Nokia WP)

As far as is known to us there was never an Android Nokia even for testing/Experimental purposes

The Design of the 800/900 admittedly inspired by the N9 have been greeted with huge success, and as such expect to see upcoming phones continue to have this same design (they call it the Fabuli design apparently that’s how the designer described it at first)

Having a technology such as pureview is an amazing thing and it would be ridiculously insane not to capitalize on it with our main ecosystem (WP)– (Probably once they’ve found a way to utilize the pureview tech with a smaller sensor)

Possible memory expansion in upcoming devices

The Lumia 610 is running on 256MB of Ram making it the first ‘fragmented’ Windows phone

Q: Since fragmentation has begun on Windows phone what’s to stop other manufacturers from making low-end phones that ruin the windows phone experience that so far has prided itself on being smooth on all devices
A: Windows has set forth a strict set of guidelines for the minimum amount of specs required for a device to be approved to run any version of WP – as of now this benchmark has been set by the 610, and for the time being don’t expect any device to launch with less specs.

Q: When are we going to see the fruit of the Nokia Exclusive customization of WP (I basically asked if we could have WP with swipe)
A: As of now we have no plans to do any serious visible customizations as that would give Nokia an unfair advantage over other OEMs that produce Windows phones which could lead to alienating them and making them switch back to android (Back to focusing on increasing the Size of the Pie itself and not Nokias share of the pie right now)

The main selling point of the Lumia 610 is it’s design and not it’s price, as we didn’t not compromise the integrity/design of the device to fit a price range.

Nokia has no plans of releasing a Tablet as of now as first of all we are still focusing on Re-entering the US Mobile market and do not want to get distracted, as well as that as of now there is no way for Nokia to stand out and offer a proper tablet experience amongst the slew of other tablets available (In other words when we do a table we plan on doing it right)

Internet tethering will Be available on the Lumia 900 upon launch however for previously launched Lumias (710&800) this feature will be pushed out with the next WINDOWS/Microsoft update (Will not be a separate update)

The date of the tethering update is not for us to announce, as it is Microsoft responsibility to push out this update

The Lumia 900 does not have a curved screen because it would lead to at least an increase in .5-1 mm of width as well as making the phone more likely to fracture (it’s difficult to make a screen that large curve without weakening the glass or having to add extra layers to reinforce it

The white Lumia 800s are available for purchase in stores as of this week

Entertainment:

Nokia Music:

Mix Radio is a free, internet streaming music proposition with no subscription or accounts needed. Just out of the box and listen to great music.

Nokia will not be making any more dedicated mobile games (no more nGage) instead Nokia will focus on leveraging the already large Xbox platform ecosystem (which will also be multiplatform)

Zune is currently only available in 5 markets while Nokia Music is available in 38; “Expect to see some branding changes” – Basically that Nokia music will replace Zune music as the default music store/player on WP. (my understanding)

Mix Radio on the Lumia range is NOT an automated service; it is actually chosen by dedicated localized teams

Nokia is currently working on expanding it’s Music/Entertainment services

Nokia Music/Mix Radio is not available on Germany due to no licensing agreements in place

Indonesia, India and China will continue to have “Nokia Music Unlimited” supplying them with free unlimited DRM-Free music downloads

The specially localized content will be available to all countries that Mix radio will be introduced into (even developing countries)

Nokia Music & Zune Music are already integrated to each other on Lumia devices (playback can switch automatically between them)

Mix radio was limited to 6 skips per hour as the app itself is highly accurate so 6 skips seemed to be more than enough to find something you like

Up to four complete Mix radio channels can be downloaded for use in offline mode

Nokia Reading:

Nokia reading WAS NOT intended to try to take on the kindle; instead it’s focused on “snacking on books on the go”- when it’s not sensible to use a kindle

Expect to possibly see Nokia Reading on Symbian soon (Not said directly but highly hinted)

The Books on Nokia Reading come from a dedicated Nokia Book store and are not from the Marketplace store (takes advantage of the carrier/phone billing options available with Nokia accounts)

Microsoft will not be included in the profit of books sold through Nokia reading (The distributor who provides the books though will get a share of course)

Nokia Reading also supports audiobooks

Nokia Reading also has “Nokia Stream” which is a RSS feed reader that can be used on the go

Nokia Reading has an optional night mode where colors are inverted (text is displayed in white on a black screen)- which should help conserve battery and ease night-time reading

Expect Nokia reading to be available for previously released and upcoming Lumia devices once the Lumia 900 is released.

Maps:

Transportation and offline maps services will be available to the current and upcoming range of Lumia devices in a separate app update whiten the upcoming weeks (no need to wait for a Microsoft Software update)

transportation with estimated times of arrival and recommended departure times will be provided to all locations that have supplied Nokia with their timetable schedules/infrastructure

Nokia maps will replace Bing maps as the default map service on Windows phone, as well as several other OSes (RIM?)

Voice guidance and turn by turn navigation have been added to the browser-based maps service on Android & iOS (Coded in HTML 5)

Maps on Android/iOS are cached in the browser to save on data charges (voice guidance can be downloaded as a separate package)

The Weather widget which was removed from Symbian will be released later (recently launched in the Beta labs)

Nokia Pulse (location-based private Social network) will get dedicated clients on Android and iOS rather than web-based accounts

Sharing your updates on FB/Twitter from Pulse was purposely left out to keep things more private

Offline nav on the Lumia range was not introduced upon release due to the limited time they had before first shipments

Hey, my name's Ali- Currently a fifth (and final) year Dental Student from Chicago; studying in Jordan. I love all sorts of gadgets almost as much as I love my cookies! Be sure to follow my Twitter handle @AliQudsi and Subcribe to my Youtube for the latest videos - no pressure. Thanks.